Tom Swann Putnam Why Reason Cant Be Naturalized

Putnam - Why Reason Can’t be Naturalized 1982

natural metaphysics as taking the scientific image as the basis for true metaphysics naturalized epistemology as disparaging traditional epistemology. anti-foundationalism. but this is an old battlecry

##Evolutionary Epistemology

reason selected as a means for discovering truths. belief rational if it is arrived at by the exercise of this capacity P4 “involves a metaphysically”realist" notion of truth… And this notion, I have argued, is incoherent." No notion of existence or truth of things independent of procedures and practices that give sense to the talk of those things. “We have many irreducibly different but legitimate ways of talking, and true”existence" statments in all of them."

still this issue of criticism - how to make space for it?<<<

To postulate an absolute Furniture of the World that is not relative to our discourse for truth to be correspondence to these objects is to revive bad metaphysics.

Truth (to us) is rational acceptability. In a discourse. (Under certain conditions, also discourse relative.)

the evolutionary epistemologist must either presuppose realist notion of truth or end up with the vacuous: “reason is a faculty for finding rational acceptability.” Firth: collapse into triviality on any theory of truth. for we can only identify actual truths by our own lights of rational acceptability. so reason will automatically seem to us to find truths, even if reason contributes to our survival by finding falsehoods.

reason is a means for coming to beliefs that increase our survival? P thinks this is a ‘loser’. Reasoning isn’t good just because it increases fitness. Science might destroy all humans. the proto-beliefs of the cockroach should be most rational

not fair characterisation of the option. better would be to talk about speed and complexity of response to environment.<<<

a problem also with ‘capacity’. even false beliefs are ‘learned’. no demarcations between capacities. >>>anti modular<<< believing and seeing clearly demarcated in ordinary talk, but the brain processes are interpentrated in ways that can only be “separated by looking outside the brain”. >>>??<<<

“reason is a capacity” as a Wittgensteinian grammatical remark?

of course brains make reasoning possible, they are the product of natural selection. P6“What is wrong with evolutionary epistemology is not that the scientific facts are wrong, but that they dont answer any of the philosophical questions.”

##The Reliability of Rationality

Goldman. rational B as one arrived at by reliable method. it too presupposes a metaphysical notion of truth. >>>how?<<<

no part of the theory what rationality /is/ - biologically or culturally evolved, etc

counterexamples. suppose the Dalai lama’s edicts are 100% true. taking him to be true is 100% reliable. But this means one could be rational to believe him even if one’s only reason is “because he says so.” >>>justification internalism.<<<

##Cultural Relativity

truth and rational acceptability relative to language, ends and context

two points that need to be balanced. 1) talk of right and wrong only make sense against background of an inhereted tradition 2) traditions can be criticized.

the standards accepted by a culture “cannot define what reason is, even in context, because they presuppose reason (reasonableness) for their interpretation.” P8

“On the one hand, there is no notion of reasonableness at all without cultures, practices, procedures; on the other hand, the cultures, practices, procedures we inheritare not an algorithm to be slavishly followed.”

Reason is both immanent and transcendent.

to lose sight of immanence is to invite fantasy. positivism as eliding the complexity of reason, and Hegel as thinking we could at the ideal survey it all. >>>!<<< to lose sight of transcendence is to becom cultural relativists. >>>funny, others (e.g. Popper) criticise Hegel for being a cultural relativist.<<<

cultural relativism as a form of naturalized epistemology e.g. Rorty, Foucault. the old accusation of self-reflexive incoherence. (Heidegger?) how naturalists? typically anti-scientistic. but P9 “same deference to the claims of Nature, the same desire for harmony with the world-version of some science, as physicalism.” the cultural relativist’s paradigm is soft science - anthropology. “That reason is whatever the norms of the local culture determine it to be is a naturalist view inspired by the social sciences.”

more dangerous than materialism. denial of thinking. the suggestion that the deep problems of philosophy are not deep at all. that traditional philosophy is silly. P10 “But the questions are deep, and it is the easy answers that are silly. Even seeing that relativism is inconsistent is, if the knowledge is taken seriously, seeing something important about a deep question.”

offers a “messy” and “intuitive” objection that relativism is inconsistent. by analogy with objection to methodological solipsism: that all talk can be reduced to or reconstructed out of bare sense talk. universal identity with his own sense complexes. admits that you are the “I” when you do the analysis. saying that everyone is a methodological solipsist. >>>or is saying all should be<<<

ludicrously incompatible. P10-11 “my experiences are different from everybody else’s (within the system) in that they are what everything is constructed from. But his transcendental stance is that it’s all symmetrical… But if it’s really true that the”you" of the system is the only “you” he can understand, the the transcendental remark is unintelligible."

consider now a cultural relativist. “X is T, by which I mean X is correct in my culture; whether any X is T is whether X is correct in the speaker’s culture.” same plight as the method. solipsist.

R.R. says 1) When Karl says “Schnee ist weiss”, what Karl means (whether he knows it or not) is that snow is white as determined by the norms of Karl’s culture. but the latter bit must be used, not just mentioned by R.R. so 2) “Snow is white as determined by the norms of German culture” is true by the norms of R R ’s culture." substituting 3) When Karl says “Schnee ist weiss”, what he means (whether he knows it or not) is that it is true as determined by the norms of American culture that it is true as determined by the norms of German culture that snow is white.

other cultures become logical constructions out of one’s own culture. to add “the situation is reversed from the point of view of the other culture” lands him in the same problem as the methodological solipsist. P12 “the transcendental claim of a symmetical situation cannot be understood if the relativist is right.”

bit puzzled by this. seems right, but can’t see it clearly.

isn’t there also a threat of regress here? Relativist formulae: For some S and X, When S says “X” S means that X as determined by S’s culture. In stating the formulae: When I say “RF”, I mean RF as determined by my culture. substituting => When I say “when S says”X" S means that X as determined by S’s culture.“, I mean as determined by my culture that when S says”X" S means that X as determined by S’s culture. call this RF2. In stating RF2, one states: When I say “when I say”RF“, I mean RF as determined by my culture”, I mean that when I say RF, I mean

same result with any meaning-condition? When I say “X” I mean X. When I say “When I say X I mean X” I mean when I say “X” I mean X. <<<

you cannot recognise others, say they are the I of their own world, if you think they are constructions out of your sense-data >>>is the point lost if we give up on sense-data and talk about worlds? “you cannot say others are the I of their world if you think they are constructions out of your world.” opens the way for talk of perspectives onto a single world… <<<

##Cultural Imperialism

to say that truth is defined by my culture tout court. special kind of realism. not transcendental or metaphysical, still talking about rational acceptability. self-refuting. no norms in our culture that decide philosophical quesions >>>sure, not in the way of authoritarian cultures, but /no/ norms? how do we decide them then?<<< against depth grammar.

Imperialism: “a statement is true (rightly assertible) only if it is assertible according to the norms of modern Western culture” would be neither assertible nor refutable P13 “in a way that requires assent by everyone who does not deviate from the norms of” modern westernity. so Imperialism is not assertible if assertible

difference between not being assertible and being not assertible. but I guess all that matters is that Imperialism would have to be rightly assertible, not merely not prohibited

P thinks all theories identifying truth or right assertibility with what people agree with, or would in the long run, or would if ideally enlightened, are self-refuting in this way. >>>how? isn’t it coherent that those at the ideal limit would assent to this norm of truth?<<<

even if our culture were coherently imperialistic, would be wrong. incoherence of all normative systems. “Our task is not to mechanically apply cultural norms… but to interpret them, to criticize them, to bring them and the ideals which inform them into reflective equilibrium.” Cavell: “confronting the culture with itself, along the lines in which it meets in me.”

we constantly remake language. P14 “Consensus definitions of reason do not work, because consensus among grown-ups presupposes reason rather than defining it.” >>>I like this, but not clear how it connects with what went before…<<<

##Quinian Positivism

Quine’s E.N. as much more subtle. not sure how to see his whole system as one. P15 “Quine’s philosophy is a large continent, with mountain ranges, deserts, and even a few Okenfenokee swamps.” >>>hehehe<<<

central notion is that of observation sentences. first gave this a phenomenal interpretation, later in neurlogical and cultural terms. First stimulus meaning: set of stimulations of surface neurons that would “prompt assent” to that sentence. neurological correlate of the sentence. sentence is stimulus-true if the speaker is actually having a stimulus in the stimulus-meaning set for the sentence. not true per se. observation sentence for a community if it is one whose t-value varies with time and place and it has the same stimulus-meaning for all speakers. “the key idea is that observation sentences are distinguished among occaision sentences by being keyed to the same stimulations intersubjectively.”

Mach treated objects as posits justified only for reasons of economy of thought. Quine gives physicalised formalisation in On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World. 1) predict certain number of stimuls-true observation sentences 2) finitely axiomatised. 3) contain nothing unnecessary to the purpose of predicting stimulus-true observation sentences; the theory-formulation must be a “tight fit” over the relevant set of stimulus-true observation conditionals.

P thinks this is fine, just not sure how to sqaure with the rest of Quine’s views. certainly, much more complicated that often realised.

what is the status of Quine’s ideal “systems of the world”? tempting to say it contains the truths and all the truths (relative to a language and choice of theory-formulations). But Quine’s theories finitely axiomisable. Godel’s result holds. if truth is provability in the system, then conflicts with Quines commitment to bivalence. a way out if he were realist. could say: ideal system contains all justified from a view encompassing all observation sentences and logical omniscience, while still being bivalent unprovables. But Quine rejects such realism, and is well leery of ‘justification’.

P suggests: bivalence has two meanings. first order: within science, including Tarskian meta-language. and second order used by philosophers. Quine allows himself a transcendental standpoint distinct from the system itself. (P not saying this is inconsistent. the m solipsist had troubles only because they denied any other formulation of talk of others.) >>>of course Quine doesn’t want this.<<< first order, P or ~p is simply true. outside, no unique world or intended model. only structure matters. every model is intended. Statements provable are true in all models; undecidables true or false in each, varying from model to model.

but quine says that all putative orders of knowledge must be subject to say methodological rules. even maths is to be certified by showing its truths are theorems in a system needed to predict stimulus-true observation conditionals. P17 “the whole system of knowledge is justified as a whole by its utility in predicting observations.” No room for special philosophical utterances.

what about Quine’s own philosophy!? Ah:…<<<

Quine’s own condition of right asseribility in terms of being a theorem in the tight fitting theory formulation implies no observation-conditionals. Self-refuting.

P18 “The difficulty, which is faced by all versions of positivism, is that positivist exclusion principles are always self-referentially inconsistent. In short, positivism produced a conception of rationality so narrow as to exclude the very activity of producing that conception.”

caveats that he might have Quine wrong.

##“Epistemology Naturalized”

different tack. Justification has failed. (puzzling why Quine only talks about Cartesian inhereted foundationalisms) “settle for psychology”.

seems sheer epistemological eliminationism. but Quine in conversation with P says he didn’t mean to “rule out the normative”. but E.N. clearly does. “it’s all extemely puzzling”

replace justification with reliability? but Quine would not. for it presupposes metaphysical realism about truth. Quine allows truth defined a la Tarski, but as such cannot serve primitive notion in epistemology. Tarski simply defines ‘true’ so that “p’ is true’ comes out the same as ‘p’. Quine’s semantic assent. P 327 EESW”Whatever we affirm, after all, we affirm as a statement within our aggregate theory of nature as we now see it; and to call a statement true is just to reaffirm it".

P20 “accept a method as reliable whenever it yeilds verdicts I would accept. I believe that, in fact, this is what the”normative" becomes for Quine".

##Why We Can’t Eliminate the Normative.

Could it be a superstition that there is such a thing as reason?

“If one abandons the notions of justification… then ‘true’ goes as well, except as a mere device for”semantic ascent“, that is, a mere mechanism for switching from one level of language to another.”

“To reject the notions of justification and right assertibility while keeping a metaphysical realist notion of truth would, on the other hand, not only be peculiar (what ground could there be for regarding truth, in the”correspondence" sense, as clearer than right assertibility?), but incoherent: for the notions the naturalistic metaphysician uses to explain truth and reference, e.g., the notion of causality (explanation), and the notion of the appropriate type of causal chain depend on notions which presuppose the notion of reasonableness."

“The elimination of the normative is attempted mental suicide.”

“If the only kind of rightness any statement has that I can understand is”being arrived at by a method which yeilds verdicts I accept“, then I am committed to a solipsism of the present moment.”

P doesn’t like the option of introducing qualification “accept in the long run”, because introduction of counterfactuals and possible worlds. “pointless”. >>>not clear to me why<<<

P21 " Why should we expend our mental energy in convincing ourselves that we aren’t thinkers, that our thoughts aren’t really about anything, noumenal or phenomenal, that there is no sense in which any thought is right or wrong (including the thought that no thought is right or wrong) beyond the verdict of the moment, and so on? This is a self-refuting enterprise if there ever was one!"

fundamental self-descriptions of ourselves as thinkers. committed to there being some kind of truth.

no eliminating the normative, no possibility of reduction to our favourite science, where leaves us? formal epistemology? over-ambitious.

“both in time and eternity… we always speak the language of a time and place; but the rightness and wrongness of what we say is not just for a time and place.”